Nina Westbrook How to support yourself and others through grief TED
Transcriber:
Cloe Shasha Brooks: Hello, TED Community,
you are watching a TED interview series
called How to Deal
with Difficult Feelings.
I’m your host, Cloe Shasha Brooks,
and a curator at TED.
This past year has been full
of both personal and collective grief.
And this grief has taken many forms.
And to dive deeper into the world
of understanding and managing grief,
I’ll be speaking first
with Nina Westbrook,
a marriage and family therapist
who has supported clients through loss.
Hi, Nina.
Nina Westbrook: Hi, Cloe,
good to see you.
Thank you so much for having me.
CSB: Thanks for joining us.
Nina, you have talked about how grief
can be about the loss of people
and tangible things.
But that it can also be
about the loss of dreams,
something that many people
have experienced over the past year.
Can you give me some examples
of grieving for lost dreams
and talk about what it means
to experience this kind of grief?
NW: Absolutely.
I believe that grief can take
so many different forms,
and I think oftentimes
when we think about grief,
we associate it with the emotional process
that takes place when we’re coping
with the death of a loved one.
I don’t know.
It’s just not as common to associate grief
or correlate grief
with the loss of a dream.
So when you think about dreams
and when they begin
and how deeply they’re rooted
into our daily lives and our routines
and how much our dreams
determine our decision-making process
and the choices that we make
throughout the course of our lives,
they hold a pretty significant
amount of space
in our minds and in our hearts.
Imagine a child who,
you know, from a young age,
we begin to dream
and they begin to dream
about becoming an astronaut one day
and walking on the moon
or becoming a professional athlete.
And then as we grow older,
we begin to focus in
on what our needs are
and what our wants are,
and our dreams begin to look more
like acquiring our dream careers
or job positions or opening businesses,
having children or finding love.
And the reality is that these dreams
do not always work out
and manifest themselves in a way
that we have imagined, right?
And that can be so devastating
for so many people.
The loss of careers and jobs
or our divorces,
the loss of relationships,
or infertility can all be
extremely devastating things
and those types of devastating events
propel you into the emotional process
that takes place during grief.
CSB: Let’s bring a question up
from the audience.
What are comforting things to do
or say when someone is grieving?
So I guess someone else in this case.
NW: That’s a really amazing question.
A lot of the time, simply being present
and offering support and encouragement
is really going to be important
when you’re trying to support
someone else through their grief.
I think communication is also important,
asking that person,
“What can I do,”
or “What do you need
from me in this moment
and how can I best support you,”
is kind of going to be the best way
to figure out how to support this person.
Sometimes they just want
someone to listen to.
Sometimes they need someone
to make them laugh or to help, you know,
keep them distracted for a moment
or sometimes they just need someone
to be around them.
It just really depends on the person,
since grief is so subjective
in the way that we go through it.
CSB: Totally.
And let’s go right
into some strategies, too.
So I’m sure you have strategies
for managing the grief of lost dreams.
How do people pick themselves
back up after that?
NW: You want to give yourself
permission to grieve, first off.
And it’s not a linear journey,
there is going to be lots of ups
and downs that take place.
Some days you’re going to be OK
and some days you might cry
and sometimes you might go
a month without crying.
And then one day everything comes
crashing down all at once.
It’s just a matter of giving yourself
permission to go through these feelings
and knowing and reassuring yourself
that this is OK and it’s normal.
And also keeping in mind
that it’s OK to feel joy
even in those moments of sadness
that you’re going to experience
when you’re grieving.
The other thing that I think
is really important
is just to be proactive
in the grieving process.
Don’t ignore your grief.
You can seek support.
You can’t be afraid to ask for support
or lean on others, people that you trust,
friends, family members, coworkers,
whomever it may be for support.
And then making a plan, making a new plan.
Mourning happens over time.
What it’s doing, what we’re doing,
and all of the emotions
that were going through
during that mourning process
is we’re literally detaching ourselves
emotionally from the dream
that we are mourning
or from the object that we’re mourning.
And what that’s doing
is opening yourself up
and making space for new dreams
and new experiences
and new opportunities in the future.
So goal setting and planning
is going to be key.
A lot of the time
we really focus on plan A.
So this is a great time to pivot
and focus on planning
for a new future and a new outcome.
CSB: Absolutely.
And just one final quick question for you,
which is that sometimes people
get mad at themselves
for not getting over their grief.
What would you say to those people?
NW: It’s really important to keep healing
at the forefront of your mind.
And I think that understanding
the grief process
and going through the ups and downs
and knowing that that’s all a part of it,
you have to be patient with yourself,
you have to give yourself grace
and understand that you’re
going to have good days,
you’re going to have bad days.
But when it all comes down to it,
if you’re keeping the idea
of healing in the forefront,
then you can focus your energy
and your time into that process
and going through it in a way
that is productive
to your emotional well-being
in the future.
CSB: Wonderful.
Well, thank you so much
for this conversation, Nina.
We have come to the end,
but really grateful to you for joining us.
Take care.
NW: Thank you so much
for having me. Take care.